


Human After All

by one_flying_ace



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: HP: EWE, M/M, Slow Burn, don't come here for porn this time sorry, like the slowest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-09
Updated: 2017-02-09
Packaged: 2018-09-23 04:35:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9640976
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/one_flying_ace/pseuds/one_flying_ace
Summary: Now he’d slid back into it as though he’d never left, most of the other Aurors deferring to him regardless of where they were. It was almost irritating, knowing they were right and he’d wasted two years pretending to be a Harry that he wasn’t. He sighed, and apparated with a crack.In which Harry wakes up, Draco grows up, and the Ministry faces some tough cases.





	

Ministry events were occasionally interesting, but often they were tedious and awkward; this one, with its swirl of vibrantly dressed celebrities from the wizarding world, was an example of the latter. Harry stood partway up a sweeping staircase, uncomfortably reminded of the Yule Ball, trying not to tug at the stiff collar of his formal Auror robes; the evening was turning out to be one of the worse ones so far.

Shacklebolt stood in a cluster of politicians, clearly hanging on his every word; Harry hoped he was persuading them into supporting some of the more liberal reforms they were trying to make, but he didn’t want to get close enough to join in. Every time he tried to mingle he got buttonholed by an another over enthusiastic admirer.

It was safer to remain on the sidelines, until it was time to eat.

“Not your sort of thing?”

Harry jumped; Draco Malfoy stood at his side, looking out at the crowd. “Not really,” Harry said, answering honestly, too surprised to lie. He hadn’t even seen Draco in the crowd when he’d made the rounds earlier, and he was hard to miss; the ever-changing silver embroidery on his midnight blue robes would’ve made him stand out, even if Harry hadn’t spent seven years looking over his shoulder for the blond hair.

“Mine either.” Draco grimaced as a witch below waved to them; Harry couldn’t tell if she was staring at him or Draco, but he groaned when she started to work her way over. “Thank Merlin,” Draco added, as someone’s amplified voice announced dinner. “Any more of this tedium and I’ll die of boredom.”

Somehow they ended up sat together at one of the large circular tables; Harry was sure he’d been placed between a member of the Vratsa Vultures and a journalist from  _ Witch Weekly _ , but Draco slid into the seat on his left instead and shook out the delicately folded napkin. Harry took a gulp from his wine glass, wondering when he’d grown up enough for this.

They didn’t talk; through the starter Harry chatted about quidditch until the Chaser got distracted by the witch on his other side, and then during the main a wizard opposite drew him and several others into a discussion about St Mungo’s. He finished dessert listening to Draco make small talk with the person to his left, a retired professor from one of the magical universities.

A deferential waiter tapped him on the shoulder as he finished his wine. “Excuse me, sir, the Minister would like a word.”

Harry slid from his seat, Draco’s head turning as he went; Harry was careful not to catch his eye. Shacklebolt sat with several of the stuffier conservatives, dressed head to toe in old-fashioned robes and looking disgruntled; when Harry joined them, the atmosphere felt strained.

“Ah, Harry. We were just talking about that idea we had, about rearranging the Ministry departments–“

When he escaped an hour later the group had thawed out considerably, willing to at least listen to the Minister, if not agree with him. Harry gloomily made his way over to the bar, almost wishing he’d invented an excuse to avoid the evening altogether, but paperwork didn’t really throw up many emergencies.

“A firewhiskey,” he said, when the bartender came over.

“Make it two. If you see a witch in peach robes with a lace cape,” Draco said, appearing at the bar next to him, “run.”

“What?”

“Retired professor of International Magical Politics, and thinks she can lecture everyone on everything because of it. Merlin’s beard can she talk.”

“Didn’t fancy it yourself,” Harry asked, fumbling for something to say, off balance for a second time. “University?”

Draco shrugged. “I considered it,” he said, snagging both drinks as they floated down the bar and sliding Harry’s over. “But the only one worth going to in England is at Cambridge, and Granger is there.” He grimaced. “There’s only so much of her type of academic zeal I can stand.”

Harry took a sip of his firewhiskey, feeling vaguely like he should be offended on Hermione’s’ part. When he looked up Draco was watching him with narrowed eyes.

“What’s happened to you,” he demanded, setting his glass down with a sharp  _ clink _ .

“Don’t know what you mean,” Harry said, startled.

“Yes you do. Once upon a time you’d have assumed I was insulting her parentage and leapt over to hex or strangle me. Now you’re just—” He gestured over Harry’s shoulder. “Sat with that lot of stuffed owls for hours, looking like you’d rather be in double Potions, but too pathetic to say so.”

“They’re not that bad,” Harry said, stung. He felt a blush heat his cheeks; he’d spent hours arguing with them, trying to persuade the older, stubborn members of wizarding society to accept some changes, and now here he was, defending them to Draco after a two minute conversation.

Draco stared at him, expression incredulous. “You don’t really believe that.”

“Look,” Harry said, suddenly irritated. “People died. I died, for a bit. Doesn’t seem much point to a lot of things these days.”

He downed his drink and walked off into the crowd, heading for the doors. If he left now, while things were still in full swing, he could get out without too many people noticing.

^^

Work the next morning was subdued, many of Harry’s fellow Aurors nursing hangovers. He didn’t feel to good himself, after apparating on several glasses of wine and the whiskey, but at least he didn’t need a sobering charm; Shacklebolt’s request for a meeting amounted to the much same thing, when he got the note partway through the morning.

“Thank you for your help last night,” he said without preamble, when Harry walked in.

“Progress?”

“Lutterwood is still adamantly against any changes, but the others are coming round.” He waved a dismissive hand. “That’s not what I wanted to see you about; Harry, I need you to work a new case.”  

“Sir?” Harry’s stomach flipped.

“You. I know your feelings about it, but you’re the best I’ve got, and I’m damned if I’ll waste you.”

“I’m still getting-” he started, but Shacklebolt cut him off, voice deep and serious.

“In this case there’s no one better. Acromantulas. You’ve not just fought them, you’ve met them.”

“I thought they’d all been contained,” Harry said, interested despite his misgivings. “After they joined the other side; Hagrid said there’s only one colony in England left, and it’s under guard.”

“So we thought. A report came in, about ten minutes ago. Looks like they attacked someone.”

“Who?”

“Name of Nott.” He nodded when Harry’s eyebrows went up. “Exactly. A cousin, I think. Want it?”

Harry knew he should say no, but- “When can I leave?”

Ten minutes later he was stood in a fireplace, adrenaline and apprehension rushing through him as the green flames roared up.

^^

When he arrived at the house there was a small crowd gathered outside, held back by a waist-high barrier; Harry recognised several journalists, and ducked quickly past. Auror Lewes, waiting by the front door, caught his signal and sliced a hole for Harry to step through, the silvery magic closing up behind him. He pushed through the peeling front door before anyone could get a good look at his face.

Inside the place was dark and rank-smelling; probably a bolthole, Harry thought, used frequently but never cleaned. A mediwitch waited at the top of the stairs, looking pale but composed.

“Auror Potter,” Harry said, raising a hand. “Body up there?”

“Not quite.” She tilted her head towards one of the rooms as he climbed up to the first floor landing. “The original report came in from an old wizard, living next door. Said he heard screaming.”

“Acromantulas?”

“That’s it. Said he didn’t know the place was occupied, and then suddenly there’s a bloke yelling his head off about being eaten alive by massive spiders. So he did an emergency firecall, and here we are. Auror Lewes came to contain the scene; I followed after.”

“So when you said ‘not quite, _ ” _ Harry said, “is there anything left?” Acromantulas dragged their victims away to their nests, he knew; for later meals. But this one might be starving, and it was unlikely it even had a nest, they’d been so hunted after the war. Besides, they were on the south coast, too far away for it to be from the colony.

“You’d better take a look.” Pushing open a door, the mediwitch stood back. Harry dug his wand out of his pocket, and stepped inside. It was gloomy, but not pitch dark; he made out a window covered by grimy curtains, a bed, and a chair, before his attention was caught by movement.

Wand raised he moved forward, then stopped. Curled up in a corner was a man, rough features bearing a superficial resemblance to the Nott Harry had seen in Little Hangleton, and later in interviews. Tears streaked his face, and he held his knees tightly to his chest, feet kicking out weakly at something Harry couldn’t see.

“Maybe St Mungo’s can do something for him.” Harry straightened up. “He’s wanted for seven counts of murder, the muggles at Kettleby Pigott right before the battle. Anything else?”

She shook her head. “Auror Lewes requested medical help and a line to Shacklebolt; I got here, we found this, then heard you were coming down. We’ve done a sweep, and didn’t find anything.”

He was whispering; Harry knelt down and listened.

“It’s been the same since we turned up,” the witch said quietly behind him. “Whimpering about the spiders coming for him, and being eaten alive. Was there one here?”

“This was a spell. If it’d been an acromantula, there’d either be a nest in here, with him inside it, or there wouldn’t be anything left at all.”  

“Right.” Harry stood up, and saw her face; she looked a bit sick. He grimaced.

“Sorry,” he said, “forgot. They’re pretty nasty things.” He sent her outside then fired off a message to the Ministry, and to St Mungo’s; in short order two more Aurors and a Healer arrived, a brisk wizard who took Harry’s hand and shook it firmly.

“Healer Pettyfer,” he said, “from the Janus Thickey ward. I understand you have a patient for me?”

“Upstairs,” Harry said, and motioned him up; he went to follow, but one of the newcomers cleared her throat.

“Sir?” He turned back; the two new Aurors stood together, clearly waiting, cases in their hands. “What do you need us to do?”

Harry paused, mind working. He’d been buried in paperwork for so long- “Do a general search; I think the place has been purified, but try anyway. And we’ll need to know how they got here; interview the street, see if anyone remembers hearing any apparations last night.”

Healer Pettyfer was kneeling when Harry re-entered the bedroom, wand held to Nott’s temple, apparently deep in thought. “Prognosis isn’t good,” he said, eyes closed.

“No chance of reversing it?”

“Unlikely. Whoever did this knew exactly what they were doing.”

Harry knelt down as well, taking in the pitiful sight. Tears had carved pale tracks in his grubby skin, and the heels of his socks had come apart, snagged and torn on the rough floorboards. By one foot Harry saw a shadow; leaning down, he saw a wand lying under the bed, and levitated it towards him.

“We’ll take him to the ward,” the Healer said, withdrawing his wand. “One of us will be in touch as soon as he’s been examined, but I think it’s fairly safe to say he will be a permanent resident with us.”

“Shame,” Harry said, and walked out.

^^

His report to Shacklebolt was brief; Healer Pettyfer had confirmed his diagnosis, adding that they might be able to lessen the curse enough to get something coherent out of Nott, but there wasn’t a good chance of it working. And either the curse or a secondary one had wiped Nott’s memory; a pensieve showed blurred shadows, and then nothing. Harry and the Minister both agreed having Nott in custody was a good result, despite his state; it wasn’t Auror-approved justice, but it was no more then he deserved.

Auror Pratchett, in charge of the Kettleby Piggott murders, accepted Nott’s wand with a heavy sigh. “It’s a relief to have the case closed,” he said, when Harry dropped it and his report off. “But disappointing too, y’know?”

“Yeah,” Harry said, although he privately felt Nott had got what was coming to him. “Shacklebolt’s asked me to remain in charge of the investigation; want me to keep you updated?”

“Sure,” Pratchett said, then added, with a wry smile, “suppose it’s unethical to say I’d shake their hand, isn’t it; whoever cursed him, I mean.”

Harry thought about Nott’s victims; seven muggles, imperiused to walk into a village pond and then left to float above it for two days; “No,” he said, “completely understandable.”

Despite what he’d said to Pratchett, continuing the case was another thing entirely. Harry thought it over as he tided his desk and wandered down to the main hall; he wanted to, but he couldn’t guarantee going unnoticed, like today. Just as he was heading towards one of the fireplaces a wave caught his eye; Meller, one of the new-ish Aurors.

“Time for a drink, Harry?”

“Er, I should-”

“There’s a group of us,” Meller said, looking hopeful; even the Aurors who’d come in with him after the war, to start the cleanup, looked a bit starstruck around him still. Harry hesitated. “Come on mate, just a drink.”

“Yeah,” he said, before he could second-guess himself. “Why not.”

It turned into several drinks, over food; Meller was working with the centaur colony in the Forbidden Forest on something, and he shared several long stories that made Harry’s stomach ache from laughing. In lower voices they discussed their cases, what bits were pleasant enough to be heard over friendly drinks.

“Is it true, about a--” Meller lowered his voice even more, “ _ spider _ being there?”

Harry shook his head. “Spell. He thinks they’re eating him alive.”

“Good riddance,” Hatcher said in disgust, raising his voice. “Death’s too quick for the likes of him.”

Harry glanced up, noticing the interested looks they were getting from some of the other occupants of the bar. He sat back, downing his drink. “Try to look less suspicious,” he said, managing a grin, and they all straightened, looking sheepish.

Chao suggested another round, but it was late, and they’d all had longs days. Harry took their empty glasses back to the bar, noticing the street outside was busy; closing time for a lot of places. He’d wait until it was quieter, then apparate.

He ordered another gillywater while he waited, and then blond hair further up the bar caught his eye; Draco raised a glass when Harry met his eyes, smiling sardonically, and moved down the room to take the space next to him; he ordered a drink as well, and Harry wondered what their conversation was going to be like this time.

“Potter.”

“Malfoy.”

He nodded thanks when the bartender brought their drinks over, gaze wandering away from Draco for a moment, to the quietening street outside and then back, to the bar. A woman sat beyond Draco was staring at him, expression dark, and he quickly looked down, putting a hand out for his gillywater.

“Wait, don’t.” Draco reached out sharply and covered the glass with his hand, his other checking Harry’s reach for it.

“What?”

“I was going to ask if you know anything about the proposed magical estates law,” Draco said, with a quirk of a smile, “but it seems I’ve arrived just in time.”

“To stop me having a drink?” Harry raised his eyebrows, mind still snagged on the woman.

“Gillywater doesn’t usually fizz.” They both looked at the glass. Draco pulled his hand away and turned it over; the skin was flushed blue. “Poison.”

Harry jerked round, suddenly no longer distracted, but the barstool stood empty; she was gone.

“Flickertee venom,” Draco murmured, withdrawing the tip of his wand from Harry’s drink. He dipped it into his own, thin black threads drifting down into the liquid as soon as he submerged it. “Mine too.”

“Bit pointless to wonder if we’ve got any enemies,” Harry said, and was startled when Draco smiled.

“Just a bit.” Disregarding the bartender, Draco reached over the bar and snagged two glasses; transfiguring them into flasks, he decanted their drinks into them. Harry transfigured two beer mats into corks, and sealed both with a flick of his wand. “McGonagall would be proud.”

“So would Snape,” Harry said, looking at the tendrils of poison drifting in the liquids.

Draco’s expression went shuttered. “No doubt.”

Without speaking they left the restaurant, the flasks shrunken and slipped into a deep pocket in Harry’s cloak. On the now almost deserted street he shivered, tiredness falling over him suddenly. Draco glanced around; they were alone, the bar door shut tight behind them.

“Will you report it?”

“No,” Harry said quietly. “It’s not the first time. Do you want me to?”

“Not particularly; I try to avoid that sort of attention. The Ministry’s,” he added, when Harry frowned in confusion.

“Come by the office,” he said abruptly, as Draco made to leave. He was suddenly curious about the conversation they’d never got to have. “Least I can do is see what I can dig up about that law.”

“I’m sure you would have survived,” Draco said dryly. “You usually do. But if you’re offering, I won’t object.”

“I am,” Harry said firmly, and apparated home, wondering what the hell he was doing.

^^

The next two days he spent working on the Nott case and doing paperwork; Draco sent a note round on the second day, saying he’d be at the Ministry for a committee hearing with some of the Wizengamot members, and would Harry have time for a chat. Harry turned the paper over in his hands, thinking; a sleek owl waited patiently on his office window ledge.  _ Come round at twelve _ , he scribbled eventually, and sent it off.

The morning started badly, when he headed up the Ministry’s steps and a camera flashed in his face; the small gaggle of journalists who hung around for anything printable crowded round, notebooks out or quills busily scribbling away at shoulder height, all demanding to know what had brought the famous Boy Who Lived out of hiding.

“I’d have punched someone,” Meller said, once Harry had shoved his way through, opening up a gap with a few well-placed jets of water from his wand.

“I did, a couple of times,” Harry said, grinning at the surprise on Meller’s face. “And Ron as well; back when we started, right after the war. Shacklebolt said it gave the wrong message.”

“Blimey.”

He met with the Minister and caught up on reports from the Aurors still searching the house, but they were gloomy; no one in the street had heard an apparation, and the house was as magically clean as it was possible to get. The only traces were from threadbare wards making it into a bolthole, but there weren’t even any clues to say when they’d been broken.

Interviews took up the rest of the morning, and then with half an hour to go before Draco turned up Harry went back up to his office. The two little flasks sat on the corner of his desk, the delicate strands of black venom looking almost decorative against their drinks; he’d puzzled over them for a bit, wondering who hated him and Draco enough to poison them, but had come up blank.

Draco turned up at gone twelve, just as Harry hit the bottom of his second sack of post. Some of it was useful; requests for help, thanks for having given it, anonymous information. There was a lot of fan mail too, people asking Harry to go to their wedding, or birthday, or even just shag them, but most of it was poisonous; from the kind of spiteful things Hermione’d had to deal with right up to people wanting to torture and murder him.

Harry jumped when a knock sounded at the door, dropping the squirming Howler he’d just grabbed. It shook itself, and launched into a tirade as Draco swung the door open and took a step in. Harry lifted an elbow to the desk and propped his chin on his hand, gesturing for Draco to take a seat.

“ _ Filthy halfblood _ ,” it screeched, “ _ a disgrace to the Potters! They would have died of shame if they could see you, a traitor to your own blood kin, their family sullied and diluted by a Mudblood _ -” It cut off abruptly, incinerated by a blue spark from the tip of Draco’s wand. Harry raised an eyebrow.

“Charming,” Draco said, sliding his wand away again. “Get many of those, do you?”

“Third one I’ve found today; sometimes they make it through, sometimes they don’t.” Harry shuffled the piles on his desk around until he found a slim green folder. “Here, some stuff about that law.”

Draco took it, still looking at the little heap of black ash. “Why did you let it speak?”

“Sometimes they’re useful,” Harry said with a shrug. “Last month I got one that helped us track down a dealer in contraband artefacts, Vane; we were getting close to an arrest, and she thought it might scare us off. Had the opposite effect.”

Draco grimaced and looked away. “We crossed paths, in seventh year. At Borgin and Burkes.”

Harry opened his mouth, then closed it, deciding to let that one go. He nodded to the file instead. “Let’s talk about that stuff, shall we?”

They talked for an hour or so, going over the proposed new law to release confiscated pureblood estates for new build projects. He’d read, vaguely, that Draco was on a few committees dedicated to bridging the gap between the new government and the old families, and he seemed to be taking it very seriously. The Malfoy name had some power still behind it, although Harry would bet the contents of his Gringott’s vault Draco’s reputation was a very different one to Lucius’.

When they’d exhausted the information Harry had been able to dig up he walked Draco out, intending to pass him through security and then go down to Records, keep working; if any of the Muggle victims at Kettleby Piggott had magic users in their families they might have a suspect, but it was slow going.

“We’ve missed lunch,” Draco said suddenly. He paused just before the Ministry doors, looking at Harry. “Do you want anything?”

Harry’s stomach growled; food was more appealing than Records, but he could see the crowd of journalists still lurking on the steps. “I should-”

“Nonsense,” Draco said, and took his elbow. He strode briskly over to one of the few Ministry fireplaces still connected to the network and stepped inside; “Poggingtons _ , _ ” he said, shoving Harry into the fire, “and for Merlin’s sake speak clearly.”

A heap of Floo powder landed at Harry’s feet before he could protest, and he blurted the word out, wondering where the hell he was going to end up.

It turned out to be the back room of a restaurant, chatter and the clink of cutlery audible past a door standing ajar. Harry moved aside when the fire roared up again, and Draco stepped out of the narrow fireplace behind him.

“This do?”

He didn’t wait for an answer, leading Harry out into the main room, a waiter darting over to seat them. Draco paused with his hand on the back of a chair, head tilted, expression faintly sardonic. “Alright?” It wasn’t, really; it was next to the window, and they were on the second floor, but Harry still felt exposed, as if at any moment someone might see him and crash through the glass. He swallowed.

“No, I- here is fine.” They sat down, and Harry cleared his throat, feeling awkward. “I try not to be too visible, when I’m out.”

“You surprise me,” Draco said dryly. “You know the papers have been plastered with your face this week, don’t you?”

Harry grimaced. “Yeah. People keep asking me to sign them.”

A waiter interrupted whatever scathing comment Draco was about to make, and they ordered. The food was delicious, rich stew and goblin-style bread, full of herbs and certainly better than anything he could’ve got in the Ministry canteen. He steered the conversation away from the newspapers while they ate, onto quidditch of all things.

“Might be some new brooms in,” Harry said, as they left. “Fancy a look?”

“Why not. We can cut through here, I think,” Draco said, peering down a short alleyway.

They went down the alley, then through a second, longer one, popping out into a small square with a fountain, topped by a preening Veela. Opposite was Diagon Alley, through a little archway between two shops.

“There’s some good ones coming out of Japan at the moment,” Harry said, and Draco hummed thoughtfully.

“The Cleansweeps are-”

“ _ Potter! _ ” The yell came from behind, and as Harry turned Draco grabbed his hand, yanking them both down behind the fountain. A hex flew past them, splintering a tree into pieces.

They knelt behind its low wall, Draco’s shield arching up and over; above them, the stone Veela put her hands on her hips as another hex flew past and over Harry’s shoulder; he flung a clumsy  _ stupefy _ back and missed, Draco’s  _ immobulus _ doing the same.

A curse struck the wall in front of Draco, sending water and chunks of stone flying apart; he grunted, wand hand dropping suddenly. Harry covered them both with a shield of his own and glanced over; Draco’s wand was in his left hand, his right held cradled to his chest. He flung another curse through their shield and ducked back down.

Sudden silence fell.

“Auror Potter?”

“Dawlish,” Harry said, when Draco looked at him. He stood, seeing their attacker immobilised between Dawlish and Lewes.

“This seems to keep happening,” Draco said, standing up next to him; he didn’t seem angry, or upset. If anything, when Harry looked over he seemed faintly amused.

“Hazard of the job,” Harry said lightly, but inside his heart had sunk; this was exactly why he didn’t go out much any more. “You don’t need to hang around for this part; he was here for me, not you.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Draco said, with a curious expression. His hand was bleeding freely now. “I’m a witness.”

Harry moved forward to meet Dawlish, and felt obscurely pleased.

^^

“He was a Snatcher,” Dawlish said the next morning, dropping a file onto Harry’s desk. “Got injured in the attack on Hogwarts, when the bridge got blown up.”

“Then why was I the one who got attacked,” Harry said bitterly, although he knew the answer. “Not that I’d wish it on Neville or Seamus, but--”

Dawlish shrugged expansively. “Your name got thrown around a lot that night. They fixate.”

“Don’t I bloody know it,” Harry snapped. At one point he’d have apologised for it, but he was tired, and fed-up; he didn’t miss the look Dawlish gave him, and his irritation threatened to tip over into anger. “I’ve got work to do.”

There were three cells occupied downstairs; he snagged Pratchett and went down to start the interviews, almost hoping one of them would have a go so he could- Harry paused on the stairs, flinching away from the rest of the thought. That belonged to the war, not to  _ now _ ; he wasn’t a teenager fighting to stay alive, he was an Auror.

^^

The acoustics in the main Ministry hall were a mess, from too many differing ideas about pillars and statues, but where Harry stood arguing with Lillian Godalming from International Relations they seemed to be particularly clear and carrying. Harry took a breath, setting his jaw against the urge to throw a  _ petrificus totalus _ at her and walk out; the doors were right behind him.

Dawlish had hurried over and now stood to one side, looking like he wanted to interrupt but wasn’t sure it was safe. Godalming pushed on.

“But you have a  _ responsibility _ \--”

“My responsibilities are those of an Auror,” Harry snapped, aware of people starting to take notice of the them. “And why those should involve talking to a bunch of people who’ve never even cast a hex, I don’t bloody well know.”

A hand on his arm made Harry break off. Draco stood there, sharp in a tailored suit and robes of such a dark green they were almost black, a faint smell of smoke about him; he must’ve Floo’d in. Harry glanced down; the cut from the attack had been healed, leaving only pale new skin.

“If you’d just-” Godalming started again. The doors were right there, behind Draco, why hadn’t he just left instead of grabbing his notebook- Harry rounded on her.

“Has Shacklebolt told you to organise this?”

She tilted her chin up, cutting a look at Dawlish. “It would be a valuable contribution to-”

Harry grit his teeth and interrupted. Paperwork didn’t give him this much trouble. “Are these official orders from the Minister?”

“Well- no.”

“Then I’m bloody well not doing it,” Harry shouted.

“Perhaps we should change our dinner plans to lunch instead,” Draco suggested in a clear voice, stepping forward. Harry bit back another comment and glared at him. They didn’t have plans of any kind, as far as he knew.

“Yes,” Dawlish said immediately, although he looked pained at the idea of agreeing with a Malfoy. Even Godalming fell back. “You should. Go, I mean. We can discuss it later.”

Dawlish hurried Godalming away, heads bent, clearly in deep discussion, while Harry found himself ushered expertly outside by Draco. A short way down the street he silently offered an arm; Harry laid a hand on his wrist and got yanked in a side-along, popping out on the steps of a wizarding club. It looked like the kind of place the Malfoy’s would be member of.

A uniformed house elf took their cloaks and a butler led them into a quiet room filled with armchairs, the heads of various other occupants visible as Harry followed. He felt on edge; half the room could’ve sent him a Howler, or worse, and the other half had probably considered it. Only when they were shown to a small alcove containing two comfortable armchairs and a small floating brazier, partially screened by an large plant, did he feel less exposed.

“Tea?” Draco asked, sitting down opposite him. It was the first thing he’d said since the Ministry.

“Yeah, why not.” It came out acerbic; Harry bit his tongue, looking out at what he could see of the room. In one of the seats nearby sat an older witch who looked familiar; she’d been at his trial, he realised with a jolt, and he looked quickly away again. Draco was watching him intently.

“I can’t imagine what it must be like,” he said, all at once going disdainful and punchable.

“What?”

“All those people asking your opinion, or your advice, wanting some drops of wisdom from the lips of the great Harry Potter,” he sneered, “the Boy Who Lived reduced to a party piece, giving interview after interview to people who want to know what it was  _ like _ .”

Harry glared, feeling flayed open and suddenly angry all over again. “It’s not like-”

“It looked like it,” Draco interrupted, sneer fading; Harry had the sudden sense it hadn’t been real in the first place. “No wonder you’ve got a short fuse these days, if that’s how people treat you.”

“Oh, please, give me your opinion. That’s all my day is missing.” It came out mean and nasty, but Draco’s sneer didn’t return.

“You’ve done things that silly witch probably can’t comprehend, even before we get to the fact that you’re the Saviour of the Wizarding World. And yes, I know you had help, don’t look at me like that. You still did it.”

“There wasn’t much choice,” Harry said, shifting uncomfortably in the armchair, wanting to stay angry but not sure who at.

“Of course there was. You didn’t have to walk into the forest; plenty of people would’ve helped you escape Hogwarts, even in the middle of the battle.”

“I’d really rather not-” Harry started, then cut himself off.

“I had a meeting,” Draco said, when the silence had hung for a moment or two. “Another Committee; I seem to be on all of them.”

“From choice?” Harry asked, genuinely curious.

Draco shrugged, relaxing back into his chair. “Partly. Someone needs - and I say this without prejudice - someone needs to represent the old families. There aren’t many of us left, and there’s some things that need preserving.”

Harry thought about it before he replied; Ron had said much the same thing before he left for Edinburgh, when the law about confiscated estates got proposed. It wasn’t about the same stuff as the war, not really; even Molly was on a few of the committees, representing various things. “You’ve got your work cut out, from what I’ve heard.” Draco snorted.

“It’s never got me attacked in the street, at least,” he said, corners of his mouth curling up. “Does that happen often?”

“Not recently,” Harry said, mouth going dry. “Only since you turned up,” he added, trying to joke.

“Don’t think about blaming me,” Draco said, “I’ve been no risk to you once we left Hogwarts.”

Harry didn’t know what to say to that, largely because it was true. He’d gone to the Burrow and then into Auror training with Ron, and the Malfoy’s had seemed to vanish off the face of the earth; he’d put them out of his mind, except for the two weeks of Lucius’ trial. Three years suddenly felt like a yawning gulf, both of them probably entirely different people.

“Is that why you hid away,” Draco asked suddenly, leaning forward slightly. “Because of things like yesterday?”

“It was too dangerous,” Harry said quietly, after a moment.“People were getting hurt.”

“Surely they know being an Auror comes with risks.”

Harry felt his hands curl into fists. “Of course they bloody do, but not because they’re standing next to me,” he said forcefully. “We’ve been nearly killed twice- you’re just as much of a target as I am, apparently. Doesn’t that worry you?”

“We’re good at surviving,” Draco said simply. “And you’re not bored, are you.”

It was a statement, not a question, and it startled him, but he considered it anyway. The room was quiet, the low murmur of conversations barely reaching the two of them. A tea set appeared on the table between them, chinking quietly when Draco held out his hand for a cup, and the embers in the braziers crackled gently, nudged every now and then by a floating poker.

It was like nowhere else Harry had been, and he knew Draco had known that.

“No,” he said. “I’m not bored.”

^^

“Dead before or after the damage,” Harry asked, looking down. What was left of an unknown woman lay at his feet, mostly; the mediwizard kneeling next to her slid his wand away and straightened.

“During,” he said, quill busily making notes by his head. “Two hexes, I think; one to immobilise and one to finish her off. The damage was extensive.”

“Any chance of spell residue?”

“None. Whoever did this knew their stuff; place has been wiped clean of everything. Not even any of the usual Muggle traces.”

Harry nodded, giving the room one last sweeping look. It’d been a shop, tiny flat above and a single room below, split in half the front was empty save for a short wooden counter and old-fashioned cash register. They knew who she was, but that didn’t make it any easier; the sister of a known Death Eater, dealing in contraband, was likely to have more than a few enemies.

He left the mediwizard to the body and ducked through to the back room.

Several more Aurors were packing up its contents, carefully sealing the jars and bags of potion ingredients into wooden crates saturated with strong protection spells. “Anything stand out,” Harry asked the room in general.

“Over two thirds of this stuff needs a permit,” Meller said, wrinkling his nose. “But I doubt your dead woman had anything remotely resembling one.”

“Bet you a galleon it’ll be fake if she does,” put in one of the others, using her wand to levitate a jar of venomous flickertee feathers into a case.

_ Your dead woman _ stuck with Harry as he left, taking the medi-wizard’s report and the victim’s wand with him as he went. There weren’t many people around who’d known him well enough to really object when he’d started keeping to the Ministry, passing cases off to other Aurors and sticking to the paperwork.

Ron had left pretty early on, volunteering to head up to the Edinburgh office and help out with their caseload and the Hogwarts situation; he hadn’t taken Harry seriously at first, thinking it was just guilt over Auror Fletcher getting hit by a hex meant for Harry, and then he’d had to leave. Hermione had understood, to a point, but she barely had time to write once she was at university, let alone tell him off properly.

Now he’d slid back into it as though he’d never left, most of the other Aurors deferring to him regardless of where they were. It was almost irritating, knowing they were right and he’d wasted two years pretending to be a Harry that he wasn’t. He sighed, and apparated with a  _ crack _ .

^^

“Done,” Dawlish said, quill drooping in his hand. “That woman had enough stock in her back room to make a gallon of any kind of poison you might want, and then some.”

“A pinch of this in the water supply of a muggle town would be irreparably harmful.” Hsiao-Ling, a plump witch in pink robes from the Department of Magical Items and Ingredients (Non-Sentient), carefully lowered a flask of powdered lava lizard venom back into a case, and sealed it again. “Fairly harmless to wizardkind, generally fatal to those without magic.”

“Fairly,” Dawlish muttered, and Harry managed a faint smile.

They’d been working for hours, Aurors bringing a case over at a time to minimise risk; Harry had borrowed an empty meeting room, covering the floor and table with thick fabric impregnated with protective spells and rinses, layering wards across the walls and door. Some of what they’d found was so illegal it had its own Auror squad, of which Hsiao-Ling was also the head.

“I’ll send you our files,” she said, and left, Dawlish following with the stack of papers that was their list; as the door began to swing shut behind him Harry heard a burst of chatter, and stuck his head out to see what was going on.

A crowd of people were leaving the room next to the one he’d borrowed, all carrying violently orange folders; Advisory Panel for the Issue of Wizardkind Incarceration, Harry thought, and snorted. It was a name Hermione could’ve come up with, although he had to admit some decent ideas were coming out of it. He caught sight of a blonde head through the throng, and bit his lip.

Ducking back he finished closing up the last of the crates and banished them to a sealed vault; the fabric folded itself up neatly and vanished to its cupboard, and the protective spells withdrew, leaving the room tidy and smart again. Harry dumped his own notes in his office, took the stairs two at a time, and skidded into the main Ministry hall, looking around.

Draco stood near the fireplaces, talking to an elderly wizard, clearly bored into irritability and not making any effort to hide it. Harry grimaced; he wanted a word, but Thelonious Lutterwood belonged in a portrait at the still empty Grimmauld Place, his ideals were that pureblooded. He straightened his shoulders, shot a smoothing charm at his robes, and strode over, shoving his wand back into his pocket.

“Ah, Auror Potter,” Draco said, when he was within earshot. He looked grim. “Have you met--”

“Several times,” Harry said, pointedly not holding out a hand. “Do you have a moment?”

“Certainly. If you’ll excuse me.”

Harry risked a glance back; Lutterwood was staring after them, looking furious. He shrugged; the man was a relic, outspoken but outnumbered. Draco was stiff and furious next to him, lips compressed into a thin line.

“Those are the people we need to watch for,” he said through gritted teeth, managing a polite smile at a witch who waved as they strode past. “They’re the dangerous ones, not the leftovers from Voldemort's lot.”

“Some of his supporters attacked a muggle village last week,” Harry said, but he didn’t put any heat into it. Draco waved a hand, face paler then usual.

“You can deal with them, often permanently, and then there’s no one else to do it, or put exploding quills into a letter and post it through a muggleborn’s letterbox.” Harry glanced at him surprised; he didn't think anyone outside the Ministry had heard about that, considering it had happened only the day before, and the newspapers hadn’t reported how it’d been done. “But people like  _ bloody _ Lutterwood--”

“In here,” Harry said, taking Draco’s elbow and pushing him towards a small door. It led into a small conservatory, filled with plants. Harry had never quite worked out why it was at the Ministry, but it was empty, and that was what they needed. He cast a silencing charm and watched Draco pace.

“He’s  _ poison _ ,” Draco spat, looking murderous. “Worse than people who sell the bloody stuff. Did you know he’s got six children, thirteen grandchildren, and Merlin knows how many great-grandchildren?”

Harry blinked. “No, I didn't.”

Draco snorted, throwing his hands up, still pacing. “And he’s the head of the family; they’re purebloods, obviously, but the old kind; they loved the war, because it meant they’d be back on top, but they despised Voldemort, because he wasn’t pure. Can you imagine the kind of  _ bile _ he spews out, at all the lovely family get-togethers? Nineteen of them, and the rest, all eating dinner seasoned with his kind of poison?”

A rose bush reached out and patted gently at Harry’s arm as Draco spoke, and he gave it an absent-minded stroke while he thought about it. He could see the point all too clearly, and it made him feel sick, made winning the war seem pointless.

It made him feel angry as well, the feeling welling up and cresting over him like a wave.

“I need some air,” he said, abruptly. “Have you eaten?”

“No,” Draco said, grimacing. “Things ran on late.”

“Come on then.” He gave the rose a last pat and pulled gently away. There was another door somewhere, tucked away behind some vines, and they slipped out into an empty hallway. They couldn’t apparate anywhere from inside the Ministry, but he found a side door, and persuaded it that he really  _ was _ Auror Potter, so they could get out and go from there.

“Leaky Cauldron,” Harry suggested, outside in the cool night air. Draco rolled his eyes, but he nodded, and they apparated. Tom was behind the bar, old and worn but still cheerful, and he found them a table tucked away in a corner where they’d go unnoticed if they were lucky. They ate and downed a beer each, both caught up in their own thoughts.

“Are there many like him,” Harry asked, sitting back down with another two pints of Hobgoblin. Draco took a sip, eyebrows raised.

“Don’t you keep tabs on them?”

“Yeah, and annoying prats as well.” Harry grinned, taking a swig of his own beer as Draco glared. “How would we do that? You’re on all the committees going, not me; I just hear what Shacklebolt passes on.”

Draco sighed, lifting one shoulder in a half-shrug. “There’s a few. Most of them keep their mouths shut, fall in line with the new way of things. They know it won’t pay to do otherwise.”

“Lutterwood thinks differently.”

“So did Nott, and that lot who attacked the muggles,” Draco said acidly, with a pointed look, “and look where it got them.”

Harry took a gulp of beer, and then another one; Nott’s story had been in the papers recently, some nurse from St Mungo’s selling the details to several rags and the Daily Prophet. Harry’s own part in the muggle attack had spread across the Ministry like fiendfyre, especially once Chao came back from Cumbria and told everyone how long it’d taken to get the werewolf out of the tree Harry’d blasted him into.

“It wasn’t a brilliant day,” he said defensively, and Draco rolled his eyes again. It hadn’t been; the Nott case had stalled out completely, and ten minutes before getting the call he’d sat down to do some paperwork and been so bored he wanted to down the contents of a Skiving Snackbox just to avoid doing it, so he’d not been in the best of moods.

“The problem with Lutterwood’s type,” Draco said, leaning forward, “is that he’s subtle. That family of his has grown up hearing his pureblood poison, and I’d bet you a new broom most of them believe it. The children especially;  _ we _ know what that’s like.”

Harry looked up and met his eyes. Draco looked at him steadily, and Harry was sharply glad to have caught him before he left the Ministry. Aurors understood a lot, from experience or their own natures, but Draco understood most things as Harry did, as something they’d experienced whether they wanted to or not. It was a bleak sort of companionship, but reassuring all the same.

They left as Tom was locking up, their chairs flipping themselves on top of the table and the crockery floating leisurely away to the kitchen. Diagon Alley was quiet, and Harry realised it must be gone midnight, the night dark and slightly misty around them. Ahead was the curve of the street, and he suddenly remembered their conversation from before.

“Never got a chance to look,” he said over his shoulder as he lengthened his stride, and cast a faint lumos to see the shop windows. “Brooms?”

“Little late for window shopping,” Draco said, catching up. Quality Quidditch Supplies was further along, and they hadn’t reached it when Draco suddenly linked an arm through Harry’s and pushed his wand down. “Shut it off,” he said quietly.

“ _ Nox _ . What-”

“We’re being followed,” Draco said, arm tightening around Harry’s. Straining, Harry picked out the sound of footsteps behind them, some way back and careful.

“Down here,” Harry said, after a second’s consideration. He crossed the street and quickened his pace, then dived down the narrow passageway to Knockturn Alley, Draco keeping pace, their arms unlinking. The footsteps hesitated and then sped up too, losing their caution. A curse smashed into the wall to Harry’s left, sending fragments flying out; several raked across Harry’s face, stinging painfully.

Draco grabbed his arm and yanked him sideways, under an archway, firing off a hex over his shoulder as they went. Heavy footsteps came down the alleyway, a beam of light wavering through the mist; Harry leant out and fired off a  _ stupefy _ , Draco jerking him back before he could see if it hit.

“Do you have a _single_ sensible bone in your body _,_ _Potter,”_ Draco hissed. Harry brushed a hand over his face, feeling the sting and the wetness.

“Cover me with a shield,” he said, which apparently Draco considered answer enough, because he swore viciously and snapped  _ “protego.” _

Harry trusted it and stepped out into the passageway, Knockturn Alley pitch dark to his right; he turned left and cast another  _ stupefy _ , aiming high. A hex flew back over his shoulder, sickly yellow in the gloom, and he flung an  _ expelliarmus _ , now he had the positioning right; something heavy crashed hard to the floor, and nothing more came his way. Draco stepped out from the arch, wand still upraised.

“Done?” He asked, and when Harry looked over he was pale but composed, eyes glittering in the faint light.

“Done,” he said.

^^

Harry stared at himself in the bathroom mirror that night, once he’d got home. The stone fragments had scored several lines across his temple and cheek, in parallel thin red tracks; they’d bled a little, but nothing he couldn’t handle. It was the first time in over two years that he’d been injured, since the attack that’d left Auror Fletcher in St Mungo’s with a stone arm and Harry with three broken ribs.

A sick feeling had settled into his stomach, a thought knocking around in his head that he didn’t want to face, dropping his gaze to the sink instead. But-

He looked back up, hair falling over his face, covering the fading scar but revealing the fresh marks, and faced it.

_ He’d missed it _ .

Missed being in the thick of the action, being attacked and fighting his way through things. People had died, friends and his only family and more besides, but he still missed it, and the thought made him want to put his fist through the mirror.

Draco had levitated the unconscious man and moved him further down the alleyway, through the archway where they’d tucked themselves. It let out onto the back of one of Knockturn Alley’s shops, a dingy little yard with a few boxes stacked up; they’d left him there, crumpled. Harry recognised him, vaguely, but didn’t feel much need to remember where from.

The mirror was impersonal and clear, showing him a marked face, tousled hair and mulish mouth, his eyes cold and hard. They’d apparated away to Harry’s flat, and there’d been a moment, on his steps, when he’d thought they might-

But they didn’t. He’d said goodbye, wandlessly moved the wards aside and slipped into the house, then leant against the door feeling his heart pounding. A few seconds later he’d heard the  _ pop _ as Draco apparated away, and now here he was, wearing only his pajama trousers, staring at the injury and thinking about Draco, needing to hurt someone or have a wank.

He went to bed instead.

^^

“Esther Yaxley,” Harry said next morning, looking out over the group of Aurors gathered in front of him. Several of them stared at the marks in his face, which hurt slightly, but no one said anything. “Sister to Corban Yaxley, and a dealer in just about every kind of potion ingredient.”

“You’ve all got a copy of what’s been found, and her customer records as well,” Dawlish said. There was a rustle of papers, and someone groaned; Harry quirked a humourless half-smile. The records were in code, and the spell had been easy to break, but the handwritten muggle code underneath hadn’t been.

The meeting went on a little longer, suggestions made and jobs assigned. Harry hadn’t run a case like this for over two years, but it all flooded back, his natural instincts kicking in. Hermione had looked at him incredulously when he’d said he wanted to focus on paperwork; as the meeting broke up he could almost hear her,  _ you’re a born leader Harry, and the Ministry needs to you do just that _ .

She hadn’t been wrong, but he hadn’t listened. As usual.

“Anything you want to talk about,” Dawlish said, catching Harry as he went to leave.

“What?”

“This,” Dawlish said with a raised eyebrow, drawing a circle in the air around his face with a finger. Harry shrugged.

“Not really.”

Back in his office he caught up on some reports and sent a note off to Shacklebolt, asking for a meeting; the Minister was busy with Wizengamot business, but he’d want to be informed. He opened up Yaxley’s records, then paused; if Ron and Hermione heard what he was doing before he told them, Harry suddenly thought, he’d be in for a right bollocking.

A Ministry courier took a letter to Ron from him, and one of the owls accepted another for Hermione, winging its way off towards Cambridge as Harry went back to his office and settled down to work.

It was slow going. He worked at the code for a bit, then went down and helped Hsiao-Ling. Lunch was a sandwich, grabbed before he Floo’d back down to the shop to help interview the locals. By the time he got back it was late, and there was something nagging at the back of his mind, but he couldn’t draw it out, no matter how hard he thought. Finally he swore and gave it up, shoving his arms into his cloak; swinging out of the door, he strode down the corridor, turned a corner, and ran smack into Draco.

“You’re like a kid’s pop-up book,” he said, startled, and Draco glared. “More committees?”

“A meeting with the Department of Magical Law Enforcement.”

Harry glanced round; the corridor was slowly emptying of another small crowd, all carrying pale blue folders like the one under Draco’s arm. “Registration again?”

“Endlessly,” he said, sourly. “As if we’re not all registered anyway, at Hogwarts and Durmstrang and every other school of magic. They just want to be able to assign little labels to us before we get there;  _ not to be trusted _ against anyone with a parent on their little list of names.”

“It’ll never get through.” Harry tugged at his cloak, skewed on his shoulders, and wished he’d brought a coat instead, muggle-like as it was. Draco reached out and gave the material a few sharp jerks; it settled comfortably, to Harry’s annoyance.

“You should’ve got these healed,” Draco said, one fingertip ghosting over the marks on Harry’s face. “Or- no, of course you didn’t.”

Harry opened his mouth to ask what  _ that _ meant, but someone called Draco’s name and he went, with a mocking wave goodbye as he turned the corridor corner. Harry stared after him, disgruntled and slightly alarmed to find that he was annoyed at not getting a proper chat.

“Bloody hell,” he said to no one in particular, and went home.

At two am that night, Harry woke up and the connection was there in front of him.

^^

“Poisonings,” Shacklebolt said, raising an eyebrow. “Are you sure?”

Harry nodded. “Those living in villages next to wizarding estates, or on ones that were confiscated in the last war. Mostly people who wanted the estates broken up for building, looks like.”

“How long has this been going on for?”

“Several months, by my reckoning.” He opened up a large map, and they bent their heads over it, Shacklebolt nodding along as Harry spoke. Eventually he sat back in his chair, sighing.

“So, Yaxley was supplying the potion ingredients, or the potions themselves.”

“Looks like it.”

“Can’t have been a Muggle who killed her; the place had been purified by magic, and she was definitely killed by it was well.” Harry waited as Shacklebolt sat deep in thought; then he turned his sharp gaze back to the map. “Nott was a muggle-killer as well, wasn’t he?”

“The Kettleby Piggott case, yeah.”

“Any others like them?”

“I can check with Records,” Harry said, making a note.

They discussed the cases a while longer, then Harry gathered his things up and left, leaving Shacklebolt looking thoughtful.

There was a note in his office, a little broomstick that whirled around his head before landing on the palm he held up. It unfolded to show Draco’s spiky handwriting; Harry checked his watch and yelped, dropping his files and legging it.

Draco met him at  _ Le Petit Lutin _ , a bruise covering one cheekbone that he offered no explanation for. They ate and chatted about nothings, quidditch teams and wizarding society gossip. Partway through Harry had to choke down the urge to laugh and wasn’t entirely successful; when he looked up Draco had paused eating, one eyebrow raised.

“Nothing,” Harry said, then shrugged. “Just- this. Us, being civil.”

“Merlin forbid we act like adults,” Draco said, but his half-smile said he knew exactly what Harry meant.

At the end of it they walked, until it was the dark of late night and icy, their breath showing in clouds illuminated by Draco’s  _ lumos _ ; Harry twisted his into shapes, showing off, something Charlie’d taught him. No one followed them down Diagon Alley this time, and there were plenty of people around. In the square with the fountain they stopped; the Veela looked coyly at Draco when he asked about the repair work, and gave Harry a sly look that made him blush.

“Il veut te tenir la main, chérie,” she said, in grating tones. Draco tilted his head to one side.

“Il veut plus que cela, j'espère. She’s just thanking us,” he added in English, when Harry cleared his throat, and that was that; they walked slowly back to Harry’s building, unattacked and quiet.

^^

There were six more cases after that, in quick succession.

All of Harry’s old, well-worn excuses had gone up in smoke as though they’d never existed. He was barely in his office long enough to scribble out a report for Shacklebolt before dashing away again, and he ate on the move more often than not; the Nott and Yaxley cases moved on behind it all, endless checking and tracing that he caught up on before falling into bed at night.

It didn’t mean all his misgivings had vanished; he kept on looking over his shoulder at every scene, worried about the crowds who invariably gathered, but he solved three of the cases straight off, and got several new Aurors through their last fieldwork tests fairly smoothly. On two of the cases he was seen and heckled, and at another someone tried to punch him, but that was okay; he’d just arrested their brother.

At a fifth the journalist whose seat Draco had stolen at the Ministry event saw him, and wrote a vicious little article that stopped short of accusing him of committing the attack himself, but only just.

Ron sent a cutting of that one, with another of Draco at some society party, and a letter asking Harry what kind of trouble he’d got into now; he sent a Howler back, grinning, and charmed it to follow Ron around asking him how Romilda Vane was these days.

^^

“Hardly enough for an identification,” Harry said, looking at the crumpled body in faded and stained robes. Blood lay thickly on the flagstones underneath him, and on several fallen blocks around the body; a wide gash across his neck told Harry how the man had died, although he wondered if it’d been a mercy in the end. “Anything to be going on with?”

“This might help,” the mediwizard said. He folded back one torn sleeve, revealing a Dark Mark. “Isn’t there a register now?”

“We’re working on one,” Harry said. They stood in a large-ish country house, partially destroyed and deserted except for some rats, a family of gnomes in the garden, and the body of a disfigured man with a black tattoo crawling foully up his arm. “Thanks.” He stepped through the entrance, the front doors handling half off their hinges, and joined three younger Aurors.  

“I’ll do the inside search,” Harry told them, although he already knew there’d be little to find. “Do a check of the grounds, look for any traces of how they managed to avoid the wards.”

They nodded and split off, leaving Harry alone as he walked down the overgrown drive to meet Meller.

“One ward triggered out of-- seven,” Harry said, checking the file under his arm. “Where was it?”

“Hidden by the left gatepost, under heavy shielding,” Meller said, gesturing to where a tangle of bright red threads still danced in the air. “Directly connected to the Ministry; we were hoping Rowle would come back, but this isn’t him.”

“What’s he wanted for?”

“General nastiness.” Meller shrugged when Harry raised his eyebrows. “He’s a confirmed Death Eater; suspected of half a dozen things, but there’s no evidence yet. I never asked, why was it assumed he’d come here?”

“It used to be part of the Lestrange estate,” Harry said, turning round to look at the house behind them. It had been nice, once; now all the windows were broken, and the roofbeams stood out starkly against the grey sky, singed where a fireball had forced its way through. Most of the outer walls were still standing, despite the best efforts of a small mob to bring them down. “The Ministry hoped it might be a meeting place for any of their friends still on the loose.”

“Right.” Meller looked thoughtful. “How did he die?”

“Looks like a slashing curse, not sure which one yet. Used lightly to begin with.”

“Lightly?”

“His face is in ribbons,” Harry said without thinking, and Meller’s face went pale. “Sorry.”

“Just haven’t got much experience with that yet,” Meller said, swallowing hard. “Suppose you’re used to it,” he added, and left Harry feeling awkward as he darted off to deal with an overzealous journalist from the Daily Prophet. Harry was glad when he left to escort the body back to the Ministry.

Inside the house was mostly solid, save for the crumbling roof beams and a lot of fallen masonry. Harry stood under the lintel of front door, and started his search.

Did Draco still have his, he wondered as he went. His own scar was fading, but the Mark didn’t, even after three years; Karkaroff’s had looked fresh, he remembered, fourteen or so years after it’d last been activated. The thought stuck with him as he worked.

The identity came through about an hour later; Mortimer, one of the Death Eaters known to be at Malfoy Manor and then at the Battle of Hogwarts, whereabouts unknown since. Harry looked through the broken wall of what had been a kitchen, over the rubble to where blood spatters lay under shimmering shields. Someone had known where he was, or at least where to contact him to set up a meeting; there was no sign he’d been living in the house.

It was dark by the time Harry finished, and he was just packing up his Auror’s case when a footstep in the hall made him reach for his wand. He’d been working in the weak moonlight, the gloom making it easier to see any traces of magic made visible by his revealing charms, and he strained to see who was approaching. Then a faint ray of silvery light slid through the gaps in the walls, and he relaxed.

“I stopped by your office and overheard,” Draco said, looking little more than a shadow in his dark robes. “Working late?”

“Someone has to,” Harry said, wondering how much Draco had overheard. Mortimer had been in the Manor at the same time as he had; it was Draco who’d identified many of that group, when his parents either couldn’t or wouldn’t. “So you thought you’d drop by?”

“It was an impulse,” Draco said, which didn’t mean much of anything, really. “Has the great Auror Potter solved the case yet?”

The carelessness was brittle; Harry recognised that now, so many weeks into their strange friendship. He paused, still kneeling, wondering how things might’ve turned out if he’d taken the same notice at school.

“Victim was Ralph Mortimer,” he said after a moment, watching what he could see of Draco’s face in the gloom. “Wanted for six different things, including torture and murder.” For a split second his expression twisted into something that made Harry’s hand tighten on his wand, then it smoothed into something more neutral; Harry instinctively distrusted it more than the first glimpse.

“Does it really matter then, all this?” Draco waved a hand at Harry’s case, and beyond, to below where the body had lain for several days. “No one will miss him, save his snivelling little friends.”

Harry stared at him, standing up slowly. “Of course it matters, he’s dead. We can’t pick and choose which cases we take on, that’s not how it works.”

“You’ve  _ killed _ ,” Draco said suddenly, sharply, flinging the word at him as if Harry didn’t lie awake at night remembering. “You tried to kill me, for Merlin’s sake. And now look at you.”

“What the hell is that meant to mean,” Harry demanded; the abrupt attack took him off-guard, and the anger that lived under his skin surged up.

“You were the great Harry Potter,” Draco sneered. “Now you’re defending someone who would’ve tried their damndest to kill you, if they’d had the chance. You’re just-- defanged and pathetic.”

Harry punched him, the thud satisfying for the split second before Draco snarled and hit him back. They fought, tumbling to the floor and scrapping like they hadn’t done since school, until they came to an impasse and paused, breathing heavily. Harry stared up at Draco, lying half on top of him, one hand pressed against Harry’s throat, frozen.

Abruptly Draco rolled off and slumped on his back, leaving Harry to stare at the ceiling and wonder what the hell was going on. He sat up after a bit, feeling gingerly at his nose; it wasn’t broken, but it was tender.

“What are those Muggles who muddle around in people’s heads, telling them why they do things?” Draco said suddenly, one hand drumming a faint rhythm on his chest. “They’d have a lot to say about the two of us, wouldn’t they.”

“Psychologists,” Harry said, after a moment’s startled thought, and snorted, immediately wishing he hadn’t. “They’d got mad over us saying we could do magic, never mind the rest of it.”

“Strange sort of people. Legilimency is much easier.” Draco got his legs under him and stood, reaching down a hand for Harry. When he took it he was pulled swiftly upwards, ending up almost nose to nose with Draco. This close Harry could see a bruise blooming over one cheekbone; he wondered what had happened to the other one, from the last time he’d seen Draco.

“I’m about done, and you shouldn’t be here,” he said, taking a swift step back. “Let’s go.”

Draco didn’t say anything more, waiting while Harry gathered his cloak and auror’s kit, then grabbed his wand from where it’d tumbled during their scrap.

He banished his Auror’s case back to his office first, then picked his way carefully down the shaky staircase, a strong  _ lumos _ making it marginally safer. Draco followed closely; he waited while Harry resealed the wards, and they headed away, down the moonlight strewn drive, boots alternately crunching over gravel and moving soundlessly over the encroaching grass.

Partway down the drive Harry had a thought. “Have you been here before?”

There was a beat of silence before Draco shook his head. “No. My dear Aunt Bellatrix never used the place for entertaining.”

Harry hummed but didn’t reply; at the end of the drive he brushed a smudge of dust off Draco’s shoulder, and waited for him to apparate. When he was gone Harry turned to look back at the house, looming and broken in the darkness. How, he wondered, had Draco known the way up to the second floor in the dark. His footsteps hadn’t faltered, but two of the Aurors had gotten lost, and that had been in daylight.

It had gone cold, the November air twisting obligingly into a tiny dragon as Harry stared unseeing at the house. He shivered, and apparated home.

^^

Shacklebolt looked grim at the morning meeting two days later, stood with his palms braced heavily on the table as he surveyed the Aurors gathered around it. His address was short and to the point; with Mortimer’s murder a pattern had become clear, and the Aurors were to bend all their resources towards it. One or two shuffled their feet when Mortimer’s name came up, and Shacklebolt glared at them.

“Death Eater or not,” he said, deep voice gravelly and angry, “no one kills and gets away with it, not under this Ministry. Not while  _ I  _ am the Minister.”

They’d made precious little progress; the meeting broke up with some new ideas that meant lots of legwork, and a few potential leads, but it wasn’t much. Harry’s mood was grim when he stopped by the post room, and the sight of a bulging sack sealed around the top didn’t do anything to lighten it.

He grabbed it and stalked back to his office, the sack writhing; plenty of magically harmless but probably foul Howlers then, mixed in with Merlin knew what.

He swung into his office and dropped it next to his desk, the bindings straining against whatever was inside. Door shut and warded, just in case, Harry sat down and flicked his wand. Several howlers burst out, red and black; an  _ immobulus  _ froze them before they could start, and he sat glaring at them for a while.

Eventually he jabbed his wand at them, one after the other, letting them speak.

_ Ruined my life-- should be crucioed yourself-- didn’t find the body-- keep looking over your shoulder-- _

He didn’t notice Draco until the first Howler went up in smoke, paper burnt to ashes by green flames in seconds. An open file dropped onto his desk as the rest went the same way.

“Interesting reading,” Draco said, tapping a finger on the file. Harry shooed the ashes off his desk and into the bin, then leant forward and lifted the corner an inch; purple, which meant the Spell Regulation Committee.  He read upside-down;

“Restrictions on the uses of illusion charms- oh, that load of rubbish.”

“You don’t think there’s anything in it? Godalming makes the point that there’s a lot of people looking to change their appearance still, and she’s not entirely stupid.”

Harry snorted. “If someone wants to hide, they won’t use any of the charms on that list. We learnt them in fifth year, for god’s sake, and anyone can cast a half-decent disillusion charm.” He looked up, half-shrugging. “I can find out some more about it, if you want.”

Draco tapped a finger on the desk again, then moved, coming round to Harry’s side and leaning back against the edge of it. Despite the height difference it didn’t feel unequal; they were a bit beyond posturing like that, Harry thought.

“I came to apologise,” he said, which wasn’t really an answer, but that was Draco all over. “For last night.”

Harry looked at him disbelievingly. “You’re joking.”

Draco bristled. “Of course I’m not.”

“You’ve never apologised to me in your life, why on earth would you start now?”

“Forgive me for trying to be an adult,” Draco snapped, standing up again. “I am capable of it, Potter.”

Harry snagged his sleeve before he could storm out, coming up out of his chair; Draco half turned back, meeting his eyes with an arrogant tilt of his chin. “I know, look- I didn’t mean that. Don’t you think we’re a bit past needing to apologise for things? There’d be a hell of a long list if we decided to start.”

“Not for  _ everything _ ,” Draco said, looking horrified. “I meant- I shouldn’t have tried to tell you how to do your job.”

“You’re not the first,” Harry said dryly, and the corners of Draco’s mouth tilted up. “But you are still a prat.”

“In the best Hogwarts tradition,” Draco said, with a sly flicker of a glance over Harry. “I’ll leave you to it then. If you could--” He picked up the purple folder again, and Harry nodded, with a roll of his eyes. “Potter.”

“Malfoy.”

Harry waited until Draco’s footsteps had faded, then shook his head and dug into the sack of post again.  

^^

The staff down in Records looked a bit bemused when Harry went down there to poke around, but they left him alone, folders and scrolls flying around above his head. The place looked like Ron’s worst nightmare, and Harry wondered how on earth he was going to find anything. He’d just asked a passing office clerk, before, but they all looked busy.

Eventually he gave up. A young witch stood sending files back to their places with flicks of her wand, and her eyes went round as saucers when Harry approached awkwardly.

“Er, I was looking for-- do you have any of the research for what the Spell Regulation Committee are working on right now?”

“Oh, for Mister Malfoy,” she said brightly, and skittered off, leaving Harry to feel bemused and faintly foolish. He left with a slender lilac folder, that he handed over next time they had five minutes to chat between Draco’s meetings and his own work.

One or two of the Aurors made passing references to Draco in the next week, almost out of his hearing but not quite. Hermione mentioned it, even; buried in the fifth page of her usual lengthy letter she asked about  _ Malfoy, I hear you’ve been seeing a lot of him recently. Reconciliation is important, and I hope- _ Harry had to stop and roll his eyes, but she meant well, and she’d mentioned Pansy a few times, so maybe there was something in it.

The day after that he was barely in his office for two minutes, pulling on his flying gear, when a clerk poked his head round the door. “Auror Potter?”

“Yeah?”

“Marcus Lemieux, from the Wizarding Opinion Commission. I thought you might be interested in these.” He held up a sheaf of papers, the uppermost stamped with a large  _ Private _ in red ink. “Results of our opinion poll regarding the integration of non-humans into society. I thought Mister Malfoy might be interested.”

“Er,” he said, feeling his cheeks heat up, goggles hanging awkwardly from one wrist. Lemieux looked amused.

“There’s a bet going,” he said, quietly, glancing around. “How long he can keep being so well-informed in meetings before you catch on and cut him off. I’ve got a month today, so if you don’t mind--” He flashed Harry a cheeky smile and held out the papers; Harry took them, alarmed.

“Right, I, er--”

“Twenty galleons riding on it so far,” Lemieux added, and winked.

Harry shoved the lot in a desk drawer and shot off, grabbing his broom on the way. The Dark artifact smuggler they were after had three dozen wards around his house in the middle of the Norfolk fens, all designed to stop anyone flooing, portkeying, or apparating in. Harry, sleek and swift on a Ministry-upgraded broom, slid past them all and had a wand aimed at Brigg’s throat almost before the last alarm, a set of bells above every door and window, roused him from a post-lunch nap.

The sheaf of papers poked accusingly out of the desk when he got back, and he stared at them for a long moment, stripping off his outer robes.

The flight had been necessary but boring, and a few ugly ideas had had time to take root.

It took ten minutes to leave the Ministry and apparate. Draco wasn’t living at the Manor any more, he knew; it was closed up, Narcissa and Lucius abroad in Italy. Instead there was a flat in a discreet building, not that far away from Diagon Alley. Harry strode in, past a series of wards he barely noticed sliding apart for him, and made for the lifts. A tiny house elf, in a smart uniform with a tiny SPEW pin on her lapel, took him up to the twelfth floor.

He knocked on the sole door, and a delicately carved elven face emerged from the wood at eye level, blinking and yawning.

“Name please,” it asked.

“Harry Potter.”

It slid sideways and vanished; after a brief wait it slid back, looking much more alert. “Enter please,” it said, and the door swung open. Draco stood waiting beyond, half-smiling, looking like he’d been expecting Harry.

Harry felt the same broad anger from when he was fifteen and hated everything, and did what he’d done back then: jumped in feet first. “Are you using me just to get information from the Ministry?”

Draco’s smile vanished. He stared for a moment, then turned on his heel, stalking from the hallway into an elegant sitting room, shoulders stiff. Harry followed, hand itching for his wand, the front door slamming sulkily behind him.

“Several of the committees I’m on can’t share a place of biscuits, let alone information,” Draco said icily, over his shoulder, “but I’ve not sunk that low.”

“It’s just a coincidence then, is it?”

“What is?” Draco leaned against the deep sill of a large window, hands curled around the wood, knuckles white. His attitude was the schoolboy again, arrogant and sneering, all the worst bits from Hogwarts pulled around him like a sudden shield. Over his shoulder, Harry saw it had begun to rain.

“You being around all the time, asking me for lunch and turning up in my office at the Ministry for a chat; Records assumed I wanted that stuff about the illusion charm regulations for you.”

“Good for them.” For a long moment they glared at each other, another idea suddenly on the tip of Harry’s tongue, vicious and nausea-inducing. He bit it down when Draco shifted, folding his arms and shifting to half-sit on the deep windowsill. His lip curled. “Doesn’t it ever get boring, always being good and heroic?”

“No idea what you’re talking about,” Harry said instantly, wishing he believed it.

“Don’t tell me you’ve never had doubts about your precious Gryffindor,” Draco asked, and when his expression went dark and intent Harry knew his memory of the Sorting Hat was written all over his face. “Oh, so you have.”

“I made a choice.”

“I can guess what it was,” Draco said, eyes fixed on Harry’s. “Us or them, right?”

“Isn’t that always the choice?” Harry crossed the room in three strides, anger boiling up; Draco didn’t move, although he had plenty of chance, merely leaning back on his hands as Harry stared down at him. “Is that what this was, you choosing them again? Getting me out of the Ministry, so I could be attacked? Voldemort couldn’t manage to do me in, so now you and your friends are having another go, trying to finish the job?”

“He was  _ never  _ my choice,  _ Potter _ . He killed sixteen people in front of me.” Draco had gone rigid and sheet white, voice filled with venom. “He made my parents and I  _ watch _ while he killed them, and then that bloody snake of his came back and ate what was left.”

Harry took half a step back, the words almost physical blows, but Draco’s hand came up and grabbed the front of his robes, holding him close. “I don’t want you dead, Potter, but if you ever compare me to him again I’ll cheerfully wring your neck.”

“So why all this then,” Harry demanded, almost snarled it; confused and angry and despite it all, half hard in his jeans. Behind Draco the rain was hammering against the window, sky dark. “Why be around the Ministry so much, inviting me out, and the-- the rest, if not to use me?”

“Because I’m not such a fool to have never wondered,” Draco snapped, tone bitter and strained, as though it was too late to stop himself saying the words. “Of course I did; I might’ve been an idiot who got dragged deeper into a war than I ever wanted to, but I wasn’t entirely blind. I knew what I liked, even at school.”

“You--”

“Don’t be an idiot, for Merlin’s sake.” He sighed, bitterness edged with impatience. “I saw an opportunity for us to talk as adults, and I took it. I had no ulterior motives; I’ve might have wanted to shag you since we were sixteen, but all I expected to get was the sight of your back as you walked away.”

“I didn’t want to,” Harry said, anger slipping away, leaving him stunned and bemused, curious despite himself. Draco was looking up at him differently too; the arrogant childhood sneer was gone, and in its place was a considering expression, his hand still twisted in the front of Harry’s robes.

“When was the last time you got angry like that,” Draco asked, using the fabric in his hand to tug Harry back in, making him lean over, almost close enough to kiss if he bent an inch or so. It wasn’t an unpleasant idea. “Really and truly angry, enough to hurt someone.”

“Apart from you?”

“That’s a given, I imagine.”

“Not for a long time,” Harry said, after a moment’s thought. Even back during training he’d stopped himself, tried to be rational and sensible instead of throwing curses around because he was pissed off. He opened his mouth to say more, just as the quiet of the flat was abruptly shattered by a shrill jangling, coming from Harry’s robe pocket.

“I have to get back to the Ministry,” he said unwillingly, not meeting Draco’s eyes. “An urgent call probably means new information on a case.”

Draco grimaced, hand opening and falling away, allowing Harry to straighten up. “Just when we were getting somewhere.”

“Towards black eyes, probably,” Harry said, although he knew that wasn’t true, but Draco half smiled. “Sorry.”

They walked down together, the little house elf in the lift practically vibrating with glee when Draco wished her a good evening. At the door Draco stopped, shivering slightly in his shirtsleeves.

“You can come back,” Draco said carelessly, and Harry lifted his eyebrows. “For Merlin’s sake, Potter; if we can move past school we can move past this.”

He turned on his heel and was back in the lift before Harry could think of a reply, the doors closing over his pale face as Harry apparated.

^^

Dawlish was exultant when Harry arrived back, waving a sheaf of papers at him as soon as he spotted Harry across the offices. “Got something,” he cried, and gestured to Shacklebolt's office.

Harry charmed the water off his robes and joined them, accepting a cup of tea and wishing it was something more along the lines of a triple firewhiskey. With difficulty he forced his attention onto the case.

“Mortimer was in France,” Dawlish said, tossing his papers onto the desk. Harry took a gulp of scalding tea and leaned over, recognising the curling handwriting of the Head Auror in Paris, Marceline Dubois. “Auror’s office over there just sent through everything they had on him, including a load of sightings which come to an abrupt end ten days ago.”

“They were following him?”

“Yup.” Dawlish shuffled through, handing a page to Shacklebolt. He read it silently, then passed it to Harry. Dawlish jabbed a finger at it. “He set off a security ward at an apparation point from Italy, and they put a watch on him; he never did anything suspicious, and they weren’t even sure it was him until the Auror tailing got a good look at the Dark Mark. Then he vanished.”

“He came here,” Shacklebolt rumbled, looking thoughtful. “Did he leave anything behind?”

“A few odds and ends; not much, but he’s never tried to access his Gringott’s accounts, so they reckon he’s been living off what he can steal.”

The room fell silent as Harry and the Minister read through Dawlish papers; Harry’s French wasn’t up to much, and he had to force his attention from wandering when he realised that thinking about Draco’s flawless exchange with the Veela statue was making his translation spell skip whole sentences.

“One thing is very clear,” Shacklebolt said eventually, raising his eyebrows at Harry.

“Someone invited him over here.” Harry tapped a finger on the report from the Apparation Regulation Squad that Dawlish had dug up. “No triggers anywhere in the last two weeks, and he was in France before then, so someone told him where to go, how to avoid the checks.”

“Is there an apparation point on the estate where he was found, that we can trace?” Dawlish asked.

“Shut down just after the Battle of Hogwarts started,” Shacklebolt said. “And the killer wiped all magical traces. He was invited there to be killed, I think we can agree.”

They did; the papers yielded some interesting points, and they settled in, pencils and quills busily moving as they worked. Shacklebolt opened up a firecall to the Paris Auror’s office, and they got hold of the Auror who’d been following Mortimer;

“Any ugly man,” she said, in lightly accented English. “Inside, oui? I thought that before I saw the Mark. He did not make friends, and he contacted no one.” Harry questioned her, but she was adamant; he’d been watched carefully, and his movements were on record. “If the mark were still active, it would be obvious, but non. Anything else?”

Shacklebolt thanked her, and gave his regards to Auror Dubois; when the fire had settled back into its usual shape he grunted. “Someone got hold of him, somehow.”

“Plenty of ways to do it without sending an owl,” Dawlish said, scribbling notes. They kept working through the rest of the day and into the night, the teapot taking itself off in a huff when the Minister asked for coffee instead; there wasn’t much in the way of solid facts, but it was a fresh direction, and it gave them new enthusiasm.

At one am, just as Dawlish stacked his paperwork neatly and Harry started to wonder if it was too late to pop back to Draco’s, the Ministry alarms went off.

^^

Harry staggered back into the Ministry two weeks later, soaked past the point of impervious charms and robes knee deep in mud. His broom would need a complete overhaul; it’d started dragging to the left three days ago, but all the apparation points were closed. They didn’t know how Auror credentials had been faked to let the attackers into the Ministry, so it’d been safer to keep flying.

Sleep and food were fond memories, almost; he’d needed to tighten the belt on his jeans another notch, and when he pulled off his sodden robes the wet jumper underneath showed collarbones far more prominent than usual.

“I heard,” was the first thing Draco said, when Harry bumped into him outside one of the meeting rooms and opened his mouth. “You look like you need some Pepper-Up Potion.”

“About three gallons of it,” Harry agreed wearily; his hair was still soaked and kept falling into his face, three weeks past when he usually had it shorn short. “I need that, twelve hours sleep, some decent food, and then I’d really like to shag you. Is that okay?”

“Potter--” Draco began, but then Harry caught sight of Shacklebolt, and it wasn’t until three hours later that he realised he’d asked to shag  _ Malfoy _ in the middle of the Ministry, in anyone’s hearing. What was more annoying, he thought, was that he hadn’t heard Draco’s answer.

“So,” Dulciber prompted, and Harry blinked. “What’s your opinion of the situation?”

“There’s more,” he said, groping through the weariness for words. “The ones we’ve got, or the ones we killed, were mostly small fry; not a Dark Mark amongst them. The organisers are still out there.”

“Will they try again?” The question came from a tiny witch Harry didn’t know; her face drifted in and out of focus, he was that exhausted.

“They want to kill the Minister,” he said, bluntly. “Of course they bloody will. Anyone who can still stand, get whatever evidence you can back here. We’ll start going through it tomorrow. I’ll be--”

“No you won’t,” a voice rumbled, and Harry turned his head to see Shacklebolt; the movement made him almost overbalance, and he grabbed the table for support. “Come on, boy.”

The Minister led him out into the corridor, the door closing against a sudden rush of voices. Harry pushed a hand through his hair again, still wet and hopelessly tangled. “I just need--”

“You need to rest, Harry. You fought here, and then you went off chasing the ones that escaped; when was the last time you had more than a catnap?”

“Dawlish might lose that arm,” Harry snapped, or tried to; it came out slurred, and Shacklebolt snorted. “Sorry, sir.”

“ _ Rest _ , Harry. We’ve shattered the group, you can round up the stragglers once we’re sure of who they are. Can you Floo?”

“Don’t think so,” Harry admitted; the thought of what would happen if he couldn’t speak clearly enough made him feel faintly sick.

“Better find someone to get you home in one piece then; I’d come, but the Healers want another look at me.”

“I can see to him,” said a voice, and Harry felt a weak rush of adrenaline surge through his weary body. He looked carefully to his left, and saw Draco walking down the corridor towards them, from where he’d obviously been waiting near Harry’s office door.

Shacklebolt raised his eyebrows, but didn’t comment. “Thank you, Mr Malfoy.”

“Can you apparate?”

Harry considered, wavering on his feet. “Probably not,” he admitted. Draco’s arm slid around his waist, pulling him close; Harry turned into the warmth of his body, tucked his chin over Draco’s shoulder, and held on.

“Follow me then,” Draco said, and Harry felt the familiar tug of a side-along.

There was a hot bath, with plenty of soap to get the mud and blood off, and then hot food; whatever it was it was delicious, but he ate the whole plate in what felt like four bites, to Draco’s amusement, and then he fell into a luxuriously soft bed and remembered nothing else.

It was dark around the curtain edges when he woke, but soft light was coming from somewhere; with what felt like supreme effort Harry turned over, shoving his hair off his face again. Draco was settled under the covers on the other side of the bed, knees bent and a book propped against them; the glow came from a delicate little lamp shaped like a branch, the shade a glass flower.

“How do you feel,” Draco asked, not looking away from his book. Harry shifted onto his front and stretched, arms sliding up overhead, bones aching and joints creaking. 

“Better,” he said into the pillow. “Less like I’m dead.”

Draco snorted. “You would know.”

Harry grinned, suddenly feeling  _ happy _ . He was warm, dry and marginally well rested; he was also reasonably sure Draco would feed him again, if he asked. He had work to do, and he’d killed three people over the last fortnight; five, if the ones at St Mungo’s didn’t make it, but he found he didn’t care, and evidently Draco didn’t either.

“It wasn’t that bad,” he said, with another half-smile. “My ribs are, though.”

“Your own fault for not staying to see a healer,” Draco said tartly, and Harry stifled a laugh. “No, you had to give your report, and tell everyone what to do, until you almost  _ fell over _ .”

“It’s my job,” Harry said, half protesting, and Draco snorted again.

A featherlight touch made him shiver, and he moved his head enough to see that Draco had shifted, the book closed, the lamp tilting itself to shine down on his back.

“I almost went for the dittany, when I saw these.”

Harry twisted his head, but he couldn’t see the three burns, striped across his back. He closed his eyes against the memory; a ragged, raging man with a whip of fire extending from his wand, the almost unbearable pain of it slashing through his robes. Then the surging anger, the old hatred filling him, that hadn’t gone away when the man was a crumpled wreck on the floor. “No worse than I’ve given you,” Harry said without thinking.

Next to him Draco went still.

“Sorry,” he said, turning his face back into the pillow. “Blame it on the last two weeks. I can-”

“It’s who we are,” Draco interrupted, lifting a hand to trace a line down the side of Harry’s face and neck, his palm fitting neatly over the curve of Harry’s bruised shoulder. “We’ve had each other’s measure since we were eleven; ignoring that would be ridiculous.”

He shifted away again, the light following; for a horrible moment Harry thought he was leaving, but he merely picked up his book again, the little owl bookmark flying up to perch on the headboard. Harry waited, but Draco didn’t say anything else, and gradually he relaxed back down into the bed.

The last two weeks, the fights and the slog over Dartmoor tracking the slimmest of traces, all faded away into unpleasant memories.

He’d have to start all over again tomorrow, but Draco didn’t seem inclined to kick him out of bed. Harry thought about the chase he’d just been on, the people who had tried to kill Shacklebolt and himself, and were instead dead themselves. The flat wasn’t covered by silencing spells; he listened with one ear to Draco’s breathing, the gentle rustle of turning pages, and another to the faint sounds of Avalon Row, beneath, and Diagon Alley, further away. Someone apparated with a faint pop, and Harry rolled over.

It could wait.

^^

In the morning he woke early despite everything, dawn light barely shading the sky a rosy pink when he slid the curtains open. Draco stirred, dishevelled and sulky; for a fleeting moment Harry wanted to hang the Ministry and crawl back into bed, forget about the dead bodies he’d left on Dartmoor and the damaged ones he’d brought back for questioning.

 

Instead he stole Draco’s shower and some clothes, standing in bare feet while Draco flicked his wand and tailored them to fit. They ate breakfast together, brought in by a smart house elf. Harry was still tired, and Draco seemed disinclined to talk, but when they were at the door he held Harry back with a firm hand, pressing the other gently to Harry’s side, where the worst of the bruising was.

 

“I don’t imagine you’ll have any free time, but get this looked at, at least.”

Harry swallowed three comments about Draco caring, and nodded.

The Ministry was chaos when they arrived; Draco slipped away down towards the meeting rooms, falling into step with several other committee members, business as usual and Harry headed straight down to the cells.

^^

Shacklebolt kicked him out at midday a week later, when Meller snitched and told him that Harry was sleeping in his office. The threads were coming together, almost making up for the dead-end nothingness of the Nott, Yaxley, and Mortimer cases, but not completely. They were missing a ringleader, and no one would talk; Harry protested, wanting to keep pressing the occupants of the Ministry’s cells, but Shacklebolt was adamant.

“I’m the Minister, my boy. Get some decent sleep and come back; you’re the Auror in charge, we need you fit. The organiser is still out there, we know that. Can’t have you keeling over in the middle of an arrest because you’ve not had a decent night’s sleep. ”

  
He sent an owl to Draco instead, waiting in the aviary for a reply, flicking through a copy of the Daily Prophet. A photo of himself from the week before stared up from the front page, looking gaunt and vicious with his broom held in one hand, squashed next to one of the Ministry; he tossed it to one side and sat back to watch the owls instead.

“Dare I ask,” Draco said, when Harry met him at the Leaky Cauldron.

“Not unless you want your head bitten off,” Harry said, after a moment’s consideration. Draco grinned sharply. He slid a glass over; when Harry took a gulp it was Romanian Dragon's Breath, potent and bitter, tasting of ice and flameberries.

“Come on.” Draco led the way out into the street, folding his heavy winter cloak around him. “You’re on loan, I imagine?

“Shacklebolt said to get some rest.”

“And you owled me. Well, in that case, I can be a decent distraction for a while. But you do need some sleep,” he added, looking pointedly at the bags under Harry’s eyes.

“I can’t, not yet.”

Draco hummed. “Come on then.”

They went into half a dozen shops, Draco keeping up a running commentary on what he was buying, seemingly not caring that Harry was only half paying attention. He roused himself when they went into Quality Quidditch Supplies, and booked his broom in for its service; he practically had to drag Draco away from a new Yajirushi model.

They carried on down Diagon Alley, past Madam Malkin’s, where he’d first met a pale and pointed Draco. Maybe he’d ask Draco if he remembered it as well, Harry thought, as they turned onto a side passage. Draco paused outside another shop; Harry glanced up, seeing a solicitor’s office.

“I’ll wait here.” Draco nodded and continued inside, leaving Harry stood on the quiet street. He shoved his hands into his cloak pockets and looked round, savouring the quiet. Thicket Street wasn’t one he’d visited before, although he knew Neville and Hermione came often to look through the bookshops.

He could spare another hour, if Draco wanted to look in any of them; he only needed a nap, really, and if anything urgent came up he’d be summoned.

“Excuse me?” A dark haired woman he’d been aware of in the corner of his eye now stood in front of him, holding out her hand and smiling politely. “My name is Paget, Emilia Paget. We met at the Ministry, a few months ago.”

“I’m sorry,” Harry said, holding a hand out to shake hers. “I don’t remember-”

“You wouldn’t,” she said, polite smile twisting into an expression of such hatred that he took a step back. “You kill us first and then ask our names.”

Her hand moved; Harry dived away, but his reflexes were dulled and the disorientation curse knocked the wind out of him. He landed heavily, shoulder crashing into the pavement. She leapt after him, strong and wild, stopping him getting to his wand every time he tried. Eventually he hauled them upright, but tired, already injured, and dazed by the curse, he stumbled, falling against a shop front.

Paget’s wand suddenly pressed against his neck, a cord snaking out to wrap around her hand on the other side. It tightened until it hurt to breathe, until he had no chance of yelling for help. He fumbled for his sleeve, but his wand wasn’t there.

“No wand now, Harry Potter,” she spat. “You’ll die at last.”

He was hauled back by the cord across his neck, Paget’s harsh breathing loud in his ear. Then she froze, the cord tightening another fraction. In the shop window in front of him, Harry saw Draco blurrily reflected; still flawlessly neat and tidy, a slim silvery blade extending out of his wand to touch at Paget’s temple.

“Release him,” Draco said softly, “or this goes into your head and you spend the rest of your life thinking you’re being eaten alive by acromantulas. Painfully.”

The cord’s pressure lessened, then vanished. Harry swallowed hard and pulled in a deep breath of air, then span round. His wand lay on the pavement a few steps away; he grabbed it, straightening in time to meet Draco’s steady gaze and see the silvery blade vanish, the woman shaking with hatred and thwarted revenge.

“ _ Stupefy _ .”

Harry’s levitation charm caught Paget when she crumpled. He and Draco turned as one when the door to the solicitor’s office swung open, their wands raised. An elderly wizard came down the steps, looking at the damage to the street with a sigh.

“I have requested Ministry assistance,” he said, in a thin voice. Draco slid his wand away, nodding for Harry to the same.

“You don’t need to stay,” he said, echoing Harry’s own comment so many weeks ago. Harry slumped against the shop wall, legs trembling. “I can deal with this.”

“She was after me,” Harry said, clearing his throat painfully a two Aurors apparated into view. He raised a hand to catch their attention, recognising Meller. “I’m about to get a bollocking, and then I’ll get some sleep.”

It didn’t take long, Harry’s brain slowly catching up with what had happened; Meller and Lewes both rolled their eyes and told him to “get some bloody  _ sleep _ , Harry, you’re not indestructible,” then left, taking the unconscious Paget with them to one of the few unoccupied cells.  

Details clicked together in his head as he watched the Aurors depart. Draco moved to stand next to him, his hand coming up to brush over Harry’s aching throat.

“Are you alright?”

Harry looked at him, thought  _ acromantulas _ , and held his tongue. “I’m fine. Thanks, for that.”

^^

Harry snatched an hours sleep and then went back, wrapping up the last of the interrogations, and now there wasn’t anything left to do; the reports were written, the pensieve vials secured, everything the Wizengamot could ask for. They were still searching for the ringleaders, but there was nothing Harry could do there; he’d be a liability in the field until he’d got more than a few hours sleep, so he’d come back to his office to think.

Around him the Ministry was settling again. The attack had thrown things into chaos, but gradually the offices were filing back up with weary Aurors, and the repair crews were almost done fixing the damage; new wards were being spelled into the building from the foundations upwards, magic filling the main hall and seeping upwards to make the tea-trays jittery.

Harry scrubbed a hand through his hair, still too long, and thought furiously, the folders for all three cases spread out over his desk.  The pattern was there, although he wished it wasn’t.

Shacklebolt came by as it started to get gloomy, the streetlamps outside not reaching far into Harry’s office. In his bright robes he looked solid and capable, despite the lingering injuries. If he thought it was odd to find Harry sat alone in a dark office, he didn’t say so, taking a seat in Harry’s second chair without comment.

  
“Something on your mind, Harry?”

The tendrils of poison drifted gently in the two flasks on Harry’s desk as he thought about his answer. “I don’t think we’ll make an arrest,” he said eventually, not meeting the Minister’s waiting gaze. “Not in the other three cases.”

“Then you know,” Shacklebolt said; it wasn’t a question. He leant back in the chair, waiting.  

“Yes, I think so.” Harry waved a hand, and the papers began to tidy themselves away, folders closing firmly around them and stacking up into a neat pile. “There won’t be any evidence, sir.”

“That much has been clear for some time. Can you find some?”

Harry had a flash of forcing Draco to give up the memories, to sink them into a pensieve with Harry’s wand at his temple. It appealed to the side of him he’d hoped he’d left behind in the war, but knew he hadn’t at all.

“Not really,” he said, and the Minister let out a heavy breath; Harry bent his head. “Sorry sir.”

“You’d better go and clear it up then.” Shacklebolt stood stiffly; the healers were still after him to let them work on his injuries. “This Minister isn’t a fool,” he added, when Harry looked up, startled. “No more, Harry. There must be no more. The motivation is understandable, don’t get me wrong, but that is not how this Ministry works.”

“Yes, sir.”

^^

The club was half full when Harry arrived, his tone easy and casual as he asked the house elf who took his cloak if Mr Malfoy was in. She bobbed her head, and led him to the same cosy alcove they’d sat in what felt like a million years ago.

“Thank you,” Harry said, and waited for her to scamper back to the entrance before moving forward. Draco sat in a comfortable armchair, looking for all the world as though he was there for afternoon tea.

Harry sat down next to him, leaning back and letting his head rest against the chair back, relaxed and easy. A glamour shimmered over Draco’s face; Harry pulled out his wand and hooked the privacy ward, drawing it closed  around their little corner.

“Drop it,” he said, and Draco stirred, glancing up and away. The glamour froze and fell apart, revealing a bruise blooming over one sharp cheekbone and a smear of blood on his temple. Harry fixed the marks in his mind, waiting for the flinch when their story sank in; it never came.

He wondered what to say. Shacklebolt knew, that was obvious, but he hadn’t ordered Harry to make an arrest, and Harry was pretty sure he wasn’t going to order any of the other Aurors to do it either. Harry considered what he knew; ran through it several times, keeping his eyes on Draco, and wasn’t surprised by his conclusion. The thrill of adrenaline filled him, followed by a new and not unwelcome kick of arousal.

“You’re a killer,” Draco said suddenly, into the silence. He spoke quietly, despite the ward.

“I’m an Auror.”

“Hiding doesn’t help.” When Harry’s gaze moved from the bruise to his eyes, Draco was staring at the fire, one hand brushing idly at the blood on his temple. “I should know.”

Around them the sounds of the club rattled on; low conversations, the clink of wine glasses, the crackle of a dozen little fires. No one paid them any attention, not even the waiters. Harry leant forward and crooked a finger at the decanter on the low table between them; it lifted itself and poured him a measure of whiskey, the glass settling comfortably into his hand, a match to Draco’s.

“I’m not hiding any more,” he said, and Draco stirred, the corner of his mouth curling up in acknowledgement.

“How much have you guessed?”

“You killed Yaxley, and Mortimer. Was Nott meant to die?”

Draco shrugged. “I didn't really care one way or another. He was trying to blackmail my parents, and he paid for it.”

  
Harry let that go; he could ask later. “The other two?”

“Yaxley visited us, at the manor.” Draco kept his voice low, but it was cold and hard. “Before we closed it up. She walked in, and offered her assistance. To continue the fight, she said. Just because he was dead didn’t mean we had to give up.” He swilled the alcohol round in his glass. “It was a perverted version of the speech Longbottom gave when we all thought you were dead, and it made me sick.”

“Didn’t know you took it to heart.”

Draco huffed out a humourless laugh, shaking his head. “Don’t get that swollen head of yours get any bigger, Potter. It wasn’t about you.”

“What was it about?”

“I’m not going to justify it; I imagine my solicitor will be able to spin a heartbreaking story about the war, and having the Dark Lord in my house for months. I don’t particularly care.”

“Shacklebolt knows,” Harry said, watching him. “I won’t arrest you; he knows that--”

“Harry--”

“--there’s no evidence; the Wizengamot won’t look at any case we can’t prove conclusively, not after the last two Ministries made them look like fools. Besides--” He broke off, looking down at his drink thoughtfully. “Shacklebolt fought with me, during the war. There aren’t many people around who did that; they’re mostly dead now, or they’ve left.” Harry thought about that for a moment, and what it meant.

“He knows what you’re capable of,” Draco said quietly, and Harry hummed agreement.

“I shut myself up in the Ministry because people around me kept getting hurt,” he said, remembering Draco’s reaction to that the first time he’d said it. “But it wasn’t just that. I kept wanting to hurt people, and it wasn’t the war any more.”

“If you’re not going to do it,” Draco said, shifting in his chair, “does that mean there’ll a delegation of Aurors waiting for me when I leave here?

Harry yawned suddenly, his jaw cracking with the effort. “Don’t be an idiot. You’re done; that’s all. I’d like to go somewhere more private and see about that shag we keep avoiding, and i don’t see why we can’t. Unless you know where the organiser of the Ministry attack is, in which case--”

“I do,” Draco said, looking at him with a glimmer of his usual smirk. Against the blood and the bruising he looked--

The club around them had filled up, their privacy ward keeping their voices in but allowing the faded sounds of chatter and clinks of cutlery in. Harry stared at Draco, considered the last two years against the previous few months, and made a decision.

^^

Four days later Harry floo’d into the Ministry, well-rested and wide-awake. It was more time than he’d meant to take off, but his trip with Draco had taken longer than planned, and they’d needed some time to recover; Meller had kept him updated with an owl each day, telling him about the Wizengamot and Shacklebolt’s ruling on the three outstanding cases, and that Dawlish was out of St Mungo’s.

He’d set a letter over to Shacklebolt the previous afternoon, with some suggestions; Draco had grumbled, but he’d firecalled Hermione and Ron as well, got their opinions and written them down. He’d shut himself away for nearly two years, pretending to be something he wasn’t, and the Ministry was stalled; it was time for some changes.

“Good to see you Harry,” Meller said, clapping him on the shoulder as they passed in the corridor. “Feeling okay?”

“Never better. Where’s the Minister?”

“In his office, waiting for you.”

Draco was floo’ing over later, for a committee meeting, and Harry wanted to set things moving before he got there. It was going to take some doing, especially Draco’s part, but Shacklebolt hadn’t ordered an arrest, so he figured it was worth taking the risk. Eventually he came to the end of what he wanted to say, and took a deep breath.

“We’re running round, chasing the odds and sods, and what what we should be doing is pulling the weeds up at the root.” That was Hermione’s phrase, but she wouldn’t mind; she’d written enough of his homework that he sounded like her in reports pretty often anyway.

“Weeds?” Shacklebolt leant back in his chair, eyes narrowing.

“You’ve seen how difficult it is, trying to push any changes through. There’s people around who still support Voldemort, or what he stood for, and it’s them we need to convince. Or force out, so they can’t spread it any more.”

Harry set his jaw and held down his simmering impatience; he hadn’t felt like this in  _ years _ , since he’d had a fight to carry on and people to persuade to fight with him. Shacklebolt hadn’t ever been one of those, but for a moment it was like being in the Room of Requirement all over again. The Minister leant forward, a slow, wicked grin spreading across his face.

“Then let’s get to work.”

**Author's Note:**

> I have reworked and rewritten just about every section of this fic at least twice, and now I'm like [this guy](http://i.giphy.com/QRHD8oXppZNgk.gif). 
> 
> Ohmylord. Have it. It's finished. It's unbetaed. It's average. I hope it's somewhat enjoyable. 
> 
> Now I need to go eat my bodyweight in chocolate, and avoid the other three H/D fics I started while trying to avoid this one.


End file.
